By Andrew Edwards
Elmore/Autauga News
It took over half a decade, but the Gin Shop/Factory Lofts are finally going to be built in downtown Prattville.
Some said it would never happen, while others held on to hope.
But here we are, nearly a month and half after initial groundwork on the project – and the dream is becoming a reality.
Production crews began demolishing the metal buildings surrounding the gin in early December, making way for the construction of the apartments.
Those were the early stages for “phase one” of the project. According to the City of Prattville, those building have now been cleared. The next step is the construction of a levy on the western bank of the mill pond.
“FEMA has to come in and will inspect the levy once it’s completed and determine that the buildings are no longer in a flood plain. It’s simply a safety precaution,” the city released in a statement.
The levy is expected to be completed sometime in late Spring 2021, but that’s not exactly a hard-cap date as the project has already seen several delays.
“We’re very excited just thinking about these lofts coming to the downtown area,” said Lisa Byrd, Executive Assistant to the Mayor. “We’ve seen so much growth across Prattville over the last couple of years, and this project really tops it all off. It’s something people have been waiting for, for a long time.”
The project will house 145 loft-style apartments, but currently has no timetable for each portion of the project.
Envolve Communities is overseeing the development.
The Prattville Cotton Gin Factory has been a staple of the community for over 150 years, and now gets a much-needed transformation to make an already beautiful downtown area even more spectacular.
A bit of History for Newcomers to the area:
Daniel Pratt Gin Factory (also Prattville Manufacturing Company, formerly Continental Eagle) is a cotton gin factory created by Daniel Pratt in the 1830s. The factory helped Daniel Pratt become the leading producer of cotton gins in the world and was one of the South’s most important cotton mills. It became the largest gin factory in the world and supplied gins to Russia, Great Britain, and France according to Wikepedia.
In 1899, it merged with other manufacturing companies to become the Continental Gin Company. It was the oldest continuously-operated industrial complex in the state of Alabama until 2012.
Early in the 1830s, Daniel Pratt purchased an estimated one thousand acres of land on Autauga creek at around twenty-one dollars an acre from Joseph May. The land was to be paid in four installments from 1836 to 1838. The purchase of this land was the starting point for Pratt’s Manufacturing Company.
The factory began as a small sawmill and used the creek to power the machines used in the factory. During 1846, this factory was one of the most important cotton mills in the South.
In 1854, Pratt built a three-story brick building to manufacture a thousand gins a year. It is located directly behind the Daniel Pratt Gin Factory and produced over nine hundred cotton gins to supply Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
During the Civil War, the factory helped Daniel Pratt become the leading manufacturer of cotton gins in the South. Pratt became very wealthy from selling gins in the midst of the Civil War. The Prattville Dragoons, the first group of men from Prattville to serve in the Civil War for the Confederate Army, were supplied with uniforms from the mill.
After the Civil War, Pratt continued to make gins and became the first millionaire in the South until he died on May 13, 1873. The Prattville Manufacturing Company continued as the Continental Gin Company when it merged with other companies in 1899. It continued to operate until production stopped in 2012.
